


If You Love Me

by inkypaws



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Smut, Twelfth Doctor Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 15:13:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5009596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkypaws/pseuds/inkypaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of stories happening in and around S9 of Doctor Who. Mainly the bits before/after an episode. Will contain smut eventually, but will also just have some fluff stories in it. Major Twelve x Clara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Love Me

**Author's Note:**

> S9. E02 - THE WITCHES FAMILIAR  
> This takes place a few days after Clara and The Doctor have escaped Skaro. Clara can't sleep and The Doctor offers a solution.

The dream is always the same. It’s dark and she’s afraid. She doesn’t know where she is and she’s wandering, lost in an endless room. She roams for what feels like hours - but her feet never tire and she doesn’t know why. She tries to sit down, but she can’t, her legs won’t move and she has to stay standing.

And then there’s a sound, footsteps running toward her. With nothing else to guide her, she follows the noise. Each time she gets close, it fades away, but she keeps moving, because what else is there to do? She’s never sure if the walls are getting closer or if her fear is getting bigger - suffocating her.

All hope is fading and then she see’s him. The Doctor, her knight in starry armour, at the end of a corridor. He’s not looking at her like he usually does; there’s no softness. He’s glaring. His eyes are ice cold and full of hate. She doesn’t know why.

“Doctor!” she says - and the word comes out, but it’s not her own. It sounds metallic. She turns, expecting to see a robot standing behind her, but there’s nothing. Just blackness except her and The Doctor. When she looks at him again, he’s holding out what looks like a metal whisk - but there’s a blue light at the end of it. He’s holding it like a gun. “Doctor,” she says again, this time taking a step toward him.

“This is the one?” he says to a force she can’t see - can’t ever see. His voice is hard like his stare.

“It’s me,” she says, edging closer still. “Clara.” There is a slight delay, perhaps a few seconds, when she hears a voice. “It’s me,” it says, “Da-lek.”

And then she realises. She remembers. She _knows_. She isn’t in a room, she’s in a box, in a tin… in a Dalek. And she can’t move, she can’t escape. Clara starts shouting then. Shouting his name, pleading to be let out. She begs for mercy but instead she says exterminate and in the end she tells him she loves him. He doesn’t hear her. He never hears her.

And then The Doctor raises the laser. His fingers twitch on the trigger and he has a moment of softness when he speaks her name. “Clara, oh Clara…” he says, “I’m so sorry.”

There’s a flash of light. She screams for her Doctor and then she wakes up.

  
~*~*~*~*~

Clara is shivering, but she’s covered in a layer of sweat. The bed sheet is stuck to every inch of her body and her hair has fallen out of it’s bun and stuck to her neck and face. It’s been a few days since they left Skaro, but she hasn’t slept a wink since. Her room in the TARDIS is bigger than it was a week ago - The Doctor made it so and she was grateful. She didn’t do small spaces anymore.

Night and Day didn’t exist on the Tardis but it had a light system built into it. The Doctor programmed it to Earth's orbit months ago - so night time on Earth meant lights out on The Tardis. It was still dark - she hadn’t been asleep long. Clara reached over and switched on her night light. Another new addition to her bedroom. She spends the next half an hour _not_ thinking about the dalek - she makes a considerable effort to occupy her mind. She reads a book - Robin Hood. The only one that made the grade to her night stand, the only one she read so much it was dog eared. But after a chapter or two her eyes start to droop and very nearly finds herself back in the nightmare. She shakes herself and tries the book again but it’s no use, the words aren’t making sense anymore. Clara sighs and puts it down.

In the absence of something to do, Clara thinks about Missy. She thinks about how easy it was for the Timelady to ensnare Clara in her trap, how quickly she had Clara bowing to her every whim and just how defenseless Missy made Clara feel. And it was all so easy for the Timelady, Clara realises, because she knows her weakness. Always has. _The Doctor_.  Missy won’t be gone forever, Clara can feel it in her bones and she knows the clock is ticking until she returns to cause them more pain, to hurt them even more.

_‘Say I love you,’ Missy had said, dancing on the spot, ‘those exact words. Don’t ask me why, just say it.’_

_‘I love you,’ Clara said, but didn’t say._

_And Missy laughed, and laughed and laughed._

Clara wrung her hands together and thought about hurting Missy. _How very Dalek of you_.  “I am not a Dalek,” she says, quietly at first, and then just because the thought of causing Missy pain hasn’t left yet, she repeats it. “I am not a Dalek! I am human… I am human. I am Clara Oswald… I AM Clara Oswald!”

Clara begins to cry. She’s tired, she’s afraid and somehow, someway every thought leads back to that nightmare. The Doctor said it would pass, but it hasn’t even started to fade yet and rule one makes itself known.

_THE DOCTOR LIES._

It’s not long, maybe half a minute later, there’s a knock at her door and a gentle voice. “Clara,” it says, “Clara are you okay?”

Immediately embarrassed that she’s been caught crying - even through a closed door - and that her sniffling has woken up the Timelord himself, Clara jumps out of bed. “Y-Yeah, I’m fine. Uh, go back to bed.”

Clara hears the door creak slightly, like he’s leaning against it. “It sounded like you were crying.”

“It just… hay fever.” As soon as she says it, she knows it’s stupid and if her pacing didn't give it away, the way she said it like a question would be telling enough.

"Clara," he says, exasperated now, "we've explored the diamond fields of Axeadamian. We've saved the bees on Botania, the planet of poisonous plants and not to mention the hours you've spent in the TARDIS greenhouse trying to grow that infernal money tree, which by the way is a massive scam. A lot of things grow on trees and money is never one of them."

Clara stuck her tongue out at the door. "Your point being?"

"Not once have you sneezed or coughed or even sniffled." The Doctor tried the door handle. It was locked. "You've never had reactions to pollen before and I'm not about to believe you've developed them over night."

There's silence and for a moment she thinks he's gone away in a strop because she won't answer, but then the door creaks again. His voice is serious this time and it comes muffled, like his lips are pressed against the wood. "Clara, open the door."

Clara hesitates, unsure of her next move. She shouldn’t open the door. She should tell him to go back to bed and then in the morning they can avoid this whole scenario like they usually do. She’s tear stained, she’s emotional. Opening the door could - would - lead to confessions she wasn’t quite ready for….

But… _but_ , she needs him.

Clara unlocks the door. It opens toward her and the Doctor is standing there in the dimly lit TARDIS corridor in grey cotton pants and a tatty jumper to match. She’s not sure if the threads loose around the sleeves are old, or if he’s just finished chewing them. His hair's a mess and again she doesn’t know if it’s because he’s been tossing and turning as much as she has, or if it just gets unruly when he sleeps.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” she says. “I didn’t know your room was so close.”

“It isn’t.”

“Oh.”

Clara isn’t sure where to go from here. She wants to ask him in, but isn’t that too forward? Last year they weren’t even okay with smiling at each other, and now she was considering asking him into her bedroom? And if his room wasn’t close, how did he even hear her? The TARDIS could be as big as a planet for all she knew. She’s about to ask him, but he beats her too it.

“Your thoughts, Clara,” he says, his eyes dropping to the floor. “I can hear them as loud as my own. Louder since Skaro. I had to link to your mind to get you out of the Dalek.”

Clara remembers that too. She remembers the Doctor touching her face, she remembers the panic in his eyes and the way his words tripped over each other as he spoke. He said sorry over and over - she didn’t say it once. Instead she told him to go, to leave her and to save himself. Her request was ignored, and then his fingers were on her temples and suddenly there was a blinding pain that seemed to explode in her skull.

“The residual nanogenes can’t differentiate between us, so until it wears off-.” The Doctor stops talking when he notices Clara has tears in her eyes. He doesn’t understand why it upsets him so much. “Hey, hey stop that thing you’re doing with your face. Clara I thought we spoke about this, two emotions at once is so confusing.”

Clara isn’t really listening, instead she’s closing the space between them and wrapping her arms around his waist. “There,” she says, burying her face into his jumper, “now you don’t need to see it.”

He’s stiff at first, like he’s afraid to relax too much, but eventually she feels him let out the breath he’s been holding. “I still don’t think I’m a hugging person.”

Clara laughs and just squeezes him tighter. She can hear the beating of his hearts and it makes her feel safe. It was the first thing she noticed once she was out of the Dalek. When he freed her, she fell forward, her legs unable to support the sudden weight, but he caught her and the staccato rhythm of his heartbeat kept her grounded. It gave her the strength to get up and run. She feels the Doctor shuffle on the spot, but still takes her time to let him go. It was amazing how comfortable a skinny timelord could be. In fact, she could quite easily stay here all night.

“You need to sleep,” The Doctor says, attempting to untangle himself from her.

“No,” she says.

“Your human body can’t sustain itself without at least eight hours of sleep every twenty hours or so.” He steps back and holds her at arm's length. “I need you on top form. I can’t have a useless companion.”

“No,” Clara repeats. _I’m not going back to the nightmare._

He sighs and Clara watches how the movement makes his collarbone poke out from under his jumper. “I can stop the dreams.”

“What?” she splutters, “you’re just telling me this _now_?”

The Doctor pulls down on the collar of his jumper. “I didn’t think you would be open to the methods of stopping the dreams.”

“Try me,” she says, folding her arms.

He swallows deeply - Clara watches his adam's apple bob up and down. “We need to sleep together.” Clara’s eyebrows shoot up and The Doctor stumbles to correct himself. “I mean _sleep_ , nothing else. I can focus the nanogenes away from you, but I need to have contact to do it.”

“So you want to touch me while I’m sleeping?” Clara doesn’t mean it to sound the way it does, but she doesn’t take it back.

“Yes. No. Well, yes, but not… I don’t mean-” The Doctor throws his hands up in the air, exasperated. “I’m not very good with things like this Clara.”

She smiles and The Doctor thinks his hearts have stopped. “I am,” she says and takes his hand, leading him into her room. He doesn’t protest. Clara lets him go and clambers onto her bed - he watches her the whole time. “So how are we going to do this?”

The Doctor takes his time to respond. Clara can see the cogs of his mind spinning away, but eventually he perches himself on the edge of her bed and re-offers her his hand. “Holding your hand should do it.”

“Should?” She takes his hand anyway, and maybe she’s dreaming it, but it feels like his hearts are beating so fast she can feel it in his palm. Silence surrounds them and she can’t take her eyes of him. She had to be honest, all the times she imagined The Doctor in her bedroom - and oh she had imagined - it was never quite like this. His back was facing her and it was ramrod straight. “You can’t sit like that for hours,” she says.

“I can,” he replies, still not facing her. “I’m a Timelord.”

“I don’t think so,” Clara says, tugging on his hand so hard he has no choice but to fall back onto the sheets. She looks down at the disgruntled Timelord and smiles. “Get comfortable. You might be okay with sitting at the end of my bed like a grumpy gargoyle, but I’m not.”

Clara rolls over and curls up into a fetal position, her back to him. Then, she waits.

The Doctor gets up, she feels his weight leave the bed, and then he paces. She can hear him muttering under his breath too and for a moment when his footfalls reach her bedroom door, she thinks she’s pushed him too far, but then suddenly he groans, and in three bounding steps, he’s back.

This time there’s no hesitation. The Doctor lays next to her, pulling her body back into his chest so he’s spooning her from behind. She can’t help but notice how comfortably her body fits with his. His arm goes around her and he takes her hand gently. “Now go to sleep,” his breath his hot against her ear and Clara resists the urge to shiver.

"Trying," she manages to say. She didn't imagine The Doctor would be so... Pleasing. He's warm and maybe it's the way they're lying but he's soft too - all his limbs and edges appear to have melted away to accommodate her body. He smells good too. Coffee? Sawdust? Ink?

"Try harder," he says. "Thoughts are a distraction."

"You're a distraction."

Quiet surrounds them again and Clara knows she should leave it be, but he's here and this is probably the only chance she's going to get to be honest without having to look at him and giving away her true feelings.

"Thank you for saving me," she says. "And I don't just mean from The Dalek, I mean from always."

"Clara..."

"I know, I know. We don't do emotion." She snuggles into him. "I just wanted to say something."

The Doctor says something in a language she doesn't recognise before tightening his hold on her. "Can we sleep now?"

Clara smiles. "Yes."


End file.
